Alicia
C. says, "Do you find the urine vanilmandelate, homovanillate, and 5-hydroxyindoleacetate
on Genova Organic Acid Test to be useful?"
I find them useful in a very limited context of trying to see if...
Well, the limitation of their usefulness is basically that you can't really tell if something
is high or low because of production or degradation.
So for example, if, 5-hydroxyindoleacetate is high, is it high because you're overproducing
serotonin or is it high because you're overdegrading serotonin?
Could be either of those.
And so, I would say, do symptoms line up with deficient serotonin, or do they line up with
excess serotonin?
And if you compare that to the high 5-hydroxyindoleacetate, then you can combine those two things to make
an interpretation of why the 5-hydroxyindoleacetate is high, and to use that as greater information
to help determine what to do about the serotonin appearing to be off.
But I do think the HVA-to-VMA ratio could additionally be used as an index of the conversion
of dopamine norepinephrine.
So, if the HVA-to-VMA ratio is high, that does suggest that you have higher dopamine
relative to norepinephrine which suggests low conversion of dopamine to norepinephrine,
and one potential reason for that would be methylation.
And so, if that lines up with low methylation symptoms or with methylation blood work that
looks like low methyl supply, then using those together I think is very helpful.
So, I don't think they're that helpful in a definitive interpretation of anything on
their own, but I do think that they can add to the picture of neurotransmitter metabolism
when paired with other information.
Thank
you
Alicia
for
your question.